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The 


Gist of Nietzsche 


Arranged by 


HENRY L. MENCKEN 


Author of 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF 
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE 


Boston 
JOHN W. LUCE & COMPANY 
IgI0 


we 24 
Copyright IgI0 
By L E Bassett | 


| 4 


LE ostein 


Denera| Ra Nov 1937 


INTRODUCTION 


987137 


INTRODUCTION. 


There is no need, at this late day, 
to offer excuses for a little book of stray 
thoughts from Nietzsche. His princi- 
pal ideas have been making great prog- 
ress since his death, and it is no exaggera- 
tion to say that many of them have found 
acceptance, at second hand, among folk 
who have yet to become aware of their 
author, save as a vague name. They 
appear, now and again, in the most un- 
likely quarters, and some trace of them 
is to be found in all contemporary specu- 
lation. Whether or not they are sound 
is a problem for the race to solve by 
experience. 

In the following pages a few of 
Nietzsche’s most interesting sayings are 
arranged under general headings. They 
show, of course, nothing of his wonder- 
fully acute processes of ratiocination, 
but only his conclusions. Nevertheless, 
they may serve to give some notion of 
the manner, as well as of the matter, of 
his philosophy. He was, first of all, a 
ruthless destroyer—the most savage and 


resolute, it is probable that Christian 
morals and Christian civilization have 
ever had to face. ‘Therefore, these ex- 
tracts are confined chiefly to his objec- 
tions and objurgations, and leave for the 
reader’s own inquiry his efforts to create. 


BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. 


Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was 
born at Rocken in Prussian Saxony, Oc- 
tober 15, 1844 and was tbe son of a coun- 
try_pastor. He was educated in country 
schools, at the academy of Pforta and at 
the universities of Bonn and Leipzig. In 
1869 the latter university made him a 
doctor of philosophy, and he became 
professor of classical philology at Basle. 
There he remained ten years, retiring 
upon a pension in 1879. In 1870 he 
served in the Franco-Prussian war as a 
hospital steward, being unable to go as 
a combatant because he had become a 
naturalized Swiss on accepting the Basle 
appointment. He attracted attention be- 
fore he was thirty by a number of acute 
studies in Greek literature and civiliza- 
tion, but it was not until 1877 that he 
really entered the arena as a philosopher. 
In that year the first volume of his first 
distinctive book, ‘“Menschliches allzu 
Menschliches” was published. During 
the twelve years that followed he wrote © 


nearly a dozen books, and in them his 
system of philosophy was gradually elab- 
orated. As a result of exposure in the 
war, his health was poor after 1870, and 
he spent much time in Italy and the Alps. 


In 1889 he_lost_his mind. His sister, 

Elizabeth Forster-Nietzsche, cared for 

him in her home at Weimar until his 

death, August 25, . His autobiogra- 
shee 


phy and several books appeared 
posthumously. Nietzsche never married. 


THE GIST OF NIETZSCHE 


INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 


E should not let ourselves be 
burnt for our opinions them- 
selves, of which we can never be 


quite sure, but we may perhaps do so for 
the right to hold and change them. 


A snake which is unable to change its 
skin will perish. So will all intellects 
that are prevented from changing their 
opinions; they cease to be intellects. 


mies to truth than lies. 


NIETZSCHE 


He who has attained something of 
intellectual freedom cannot regard him- 
self otherwise than as a wanderer on 
earth, and not as a traveller towards some 
goal, for none exists. But he will have 
his eyes open and watch what happens in 
the world. Such a man will have many 
hours of sadness when he wanders in the 
fields of knowledge as in a desert, but he 


will experience also _morning- hours of 
radiant happiness, when many pleasures 


surround him, gifts of the free spirits who 
dwell in the mountains and forests of soli- 
tude, and, like him, are philosophers and 
wanderers. 


MORALITY 3 
MORALITY. 


HAT is Banc’ AU that increases 
the feeling of power-—the will to ; 
power—power itself—in man! 


weakest bad? All_that comes from 


aan is happiness? The_ feeling. 
that._power_increases—that_ resistence is 


being overcome! 
Let us have, not contentedness, but 


more power—not peace at any price, but 
warfare—not virtue, but 
The weak must ‘perish! That is the 
first principle of our charity. And we 
must help them to do so. 
What is more dangerous to the 
human race than atts crime?r 
sympat hristianity! 


Dae Antichrist, 2 


Life is essentially the appropriation, 
the injury, the vanquishing of the un- 
adapted and weak. Its object is to ob- 
trude its own forms and insure its own 


4 NIETZSCHE 


unobstructed functioning. Even an or- 
ganization whose individuals forebear 
in their dealings with one another (a 
healthy aristocracy, for instance) must, 
if it would live and not die, act hostilely 
toward all other organizations. It must 
endeavor to gain ground, to obtain ad- 
vantages, to acquire ascendancy. And 
this is not because it is immoral, but be- 
cause it lives and all life is will to 
power. 

—Jenseits von Gut und Bose, 259 


In itself an act of injury, violation, 
exploitation or annihilation cannot be 
wrong, for life operates, essentially and 
fundamentally, by injuring, violating, 
exploiting and annihilating, and cannot 
even be conceived of as existing other- 
wise. One must admit, indeed, that 
from the highest biological standpoint, 
conditions under which the so-called 
rights of others are recognized must be 
ever regarded as exceptional conditions 
—that is to say, as partial restrictions of 
the instinctive power-seeking will to live 
of the individual, made to satisfy the 
more powerful will to live of the mass. 


MORALITY 5 


Thus small units of power are sacrificed 
to create large units. To regard the 
rights of others as being inherent in 
them, and not as mere compromises for 
the benefit of the mass-unit, is to enun- 
ciate a principle hostile to life itself. 


—Zur Geneologie der Moral, II, 11 


Morality not only commands. in- 
numerable terrible means for preventing 
critical hands being laid on her; her se- 
curity depends still more upon a sort of 
enchantment at which she is phenom- 
enally skilled. That it to say, she knows 
how to enrapture. She appeals to the 
emotions; her glance paralyzes the rea- 
son and the will...... Ever since there 
has been talking and persuading on 
earth, she has been the supreme mistress 
of seduction. 

—Morgenrote, preface, 3 


A_ double wall is set up against the | 
continued testing, selection _and_criticism — 
of moral values. On one hand stands 


6 NIETZSCHE 


revelation, and on the other veneration 
and tradition. The authority of the 
moral law is based upon two assumptions 


—first_that_God gave it, and secondly, 


that the wise men of the past obeyed it. 
—Der Antichrist, 57 


Among the ancient master races the 
antithesis ‘“‘good and bad” signified prac- 
tically the same as “noble and contempt- 
ible.’ ‘The despised ones were the 
cowards, the timid, the insignificant, the 
self-abasing —the dog-species of men 
who allowed themselves to be misused— 
the flatterers and: above all, the liars. 
hr eriie The master type of man regards 
himself as a sufficient judge of worth. 
He does not seek approval; his own feel- 
ings determine his conduct. ‘‘What is 
injurious to me,” he reasons, “‘is injurious 
in itself.” This type of man honors 
whatever qualities he recognizes in him- 
self; his morality is self-glorification. 
He has a feeling of plentitude and pow- 
er and the happiness of high tension. 
He helps the unfortunate, perhaps, but 
it is not out of pity. The impulse, when 
it comes at all, rises out of his supera- 


MORALITY » 


bundance of power—his thirst to func- 
tion. He honors his own power, and he 
knows how to keep it in hand. He joy- 
fully exercises strictness and severity 
over himself and he reverences all that 
igpetnicorand SCVEre,. , b..c-).< The master- 
morality of this master caste is irritating 
to the taste of the present day because 
of its fundamental principle that a man 
has obligations only to his equals—that 
he may act as he pleases toward all of 
lower rank and all that are foreign. 


—Jenseits von Gut und Bose, 260 


By the s/ave-morality of Christian- 
Liver A: the impotence which does not 
retaliate for injuries is falsified into 
‘goodness ;” timorous abjectness becomes 
“humility ;” subjection to those one hates 
is called ‘‘obedience,” and the one who 
desires and commands this impotence, 
abjectness and subjection is called God. 
The inoffensiveness of the weak, their 
Conve IGe 2: . at: their standing at the 
door, their unavoidable time-serving and 
waiting—all these things get good names. 
The inability to get revenge is translated 
into an unwillingness to get revenge, and 


8 NIETZSCHE 


becomes “forgiveness,” a virtue...... 
They are wretched, these mutterers and 
forgers, but they say that their wretched- 
ness is of God’s choosing, and even call 
it a distinction that he confers upon 
them. The dogs that are liked best, 
they say, are beaten most. Their 
wretchedness is a test, a preparation, a 
schooling, something which will be paid 
for, one day, in happiness. ‘They call 
this “‘bliss.” 


—Zur Geneologie der Moral, I, 14 


During the Prae-historic or Prae- 
moral Period, the value of an action was 
determined by its after-effects, which 
made men think well or ill of it. But 
during the last ten thousand years—the 
Moral Period—the origin of an action, 
and not its consequences, has determined 
its value. Is it not once more necessary 
to reconsider values, on the threshold of 
the Ultra-Moral Period? Moral inten- 
tion has been a prejudice, premature and 
provisional, and ought to be surmounted. 


CASTES 9 


CASTES. 


law of nature, against which no 

merely human agency can prevail. 
In every healthy society there are three 
broad castes, each of which has its own 
morality, its own work, its own notion of 
perfection and its own sense of mastery. 
The first caste comprises those who are . 
obviously superior to the mass intellect- 
ually; the second includes those whose 
superiority is chiefly muscular, and the 
third is made up of the indifferent. The 
third caste, very naturally, is the most 
numerous, but the first is the most pow- 
erful. 

To this highest caste belongs the 
privilege of representing beauty, happi- 


, SHE order of castes is the dominant 


ness and goodness on earth...... Its 
members accept the world as they find it 
and make the best of it...... They find 


their happiness in those things which, to 
lesser men, would spell ruin—in the 
labyrinth, in severity toward themselves 
and others, in effort. Their delight is 
self-government; with them asceticism 


10 NIETZSCHE 


becomes naturalness, necessity, instinct. 
A difficult task is regarded by them as 
a privilege; to play with burdens which 
would crush others to death is their rec- 
reation. ‘They are the most venerable 
species of men. They are the most cheer- 
ful, the most amiable. They rule be- 
cause they are what they are. They are 
not at liberty to take second rank. 

The second caste includes the guard- 
ians and keepers of order and security— 
the warriors, the nobles, the king—above 
all, as the highest types of warriors, the 
judges and defenders of the law. They 
execute the mandates of the first caste, 
relieving the latter of all that is coarse 
and menial in the work of ruling. 

At the bottom are the workers— 
the men of handicraft, trade, agriculture 
and the greater part of art and science. 
It is the law of nature that they should 
be public utilities—that they should be 
wheels and functions. The only kind of 
happiness of which they are capable 
makes intelligent machines of them. For 
the mediocre, it is happiness to be me- 


diocre. In them _the-—mastery of one 
thing—1. e. specialization—is an instinct. 
It is unworthy of a profound in- 


tellect to see in mediocrity itself an ob- 


CASTES II 


jection. It is, indeed, a necessity of 
human existence, for only in the presence 
of a horde of average men is the excep- 
tional man a possibility. 

Whom do I hate most among the 
men of today? The socialist who under- 
mines the workingman’s healthy instincts, 
who takes from him his feeling of con- 
tentedness with his existence, who 
makes him envious, who teaches him re- 
DOUG ert ai There is no wrong in un- 
equal rights; it lies in the vain pretension 
to equal rights. | 

—Der Antichrist, 57 


There have always been hordes of 
men, and a greater number of those who 
obeyed than those who commanded. The 
need of obedience has become a kind of 
formal conscience in men. ‘They accept 
all that authorities—rulers, parents, 
masters, laws, class prejudices or public 
opinion—declare unto them. But this 
instinctive obedience is transmitted at 
the expense of the art of commanding. 
The commanding class have become 
ashamed, and justify themselves by play- 
ing the role of executors of the orders of 


12 NIETZSCHE 


higher authorities, such as ancestors, the 
constitution, the laws, or the Diety; or 
perhaps they claim to be first servants of 
the herd, or instruments of the public 
weal. The gregarious man nowadays 
would fain claim to be the only legit- 
imate person, and he puts forward his 
shortsighted utilitarian virtues, which 
render him gentle, tractable and useful, 
as the only virtues. They replace com- 
manders by assemblies of clever men 
from among themselves. 


Every improvement of the type 
Man has been the work of an aristocrat- 
ic society—and it will always be so—a 
society with a long hierarchy, of rank 
and differences among man, and based 
on slavery in one sense or another. With- 
out the sentiment of distance thus evolved 
there could not have been developed the 
desire to augment the distances in the in- 
terior of the soul—the psychic force 
characteristic of the noble caste. 


One does not hate so long as one 
despises; but only when one deems a per- 
son one’s equal or superior. 


CHRISTIANITY 13 


CHRISTIANITY. 


condemn Christianity. I bring against 
[: Christian church the most ter- 

rible accusation ever voiced. It is to 
me the greatest of all imaginable cor- . 
ruptions; it has sought to bring about 
the ultimate corruption. It has left 
nothing uncontaminated by its depravity ; 
it has made every valuable thing worth- 
less, every truth a lie, every honest im- 
pulse a baseness of soul. 

Let anyone dare speak to me of its 
“humanitarian” blessings! To do away 
with distress has always been counter to 
its fundamental policy; it has lived by 
distress, it has created distress in order 
to make itself necessary and eternal. 
Consider, for example, the consciousness 
of sin; it remained for the church to 
enrich mankind with that state of dis- 
Bese itiiats 2: And “the equality of souls 
before the Lord;” that falsehood, that 
excuse for the rancor of the degraded, 
that explosive idea which has grown in- 
to revolution and the decadence of all 


14 NIETZSCHE 


society—is Christian dynamite!....‘Hu- 
manitarian” blessings of Christianity! 
Pooh! It breeds out of humanities a 
self-crucifixion, an art of self-voilation, 
a will to the lie at any price, a repug- 
nance and contempt for all healthy and 
honest instincts! ‘These are for me the 
blessings of Christianity! 

Parasitism is the so/e praxis of the 
church—drinking out all blood, all love, 
all hope in life, with its anaemic ideals 
of holiness—the other world as an in- 
spiration to the negation of every reality 
—the cross as the rallying sign for the 
most underhand conspiracy that has ever 
existed—against health, beauty, well- 
being, courage, intelligence, benevolence 
of soul—against life itself! 

This eternal accusation against 
Christianity I shall write on all walls, 
wherever there are walls (I have letters 
for making even the blind see); I call 
Christianity the one great curse, the one 
great intrinsic depravity, the one great 
instinct for revenge (of the weak upon 
the strong) for which no expedient is 
AR ae TALS secret, subterrane- 


an, mean call it the one immortal 
blemish upon the human racel? 
a Der Antichrist, 62 


CHRISTIANITY 15 


A Jesus Christ was only possible in 
Jewish landscape—I mean to say, in a 
landscape over which hangs continually 
the gloomy and majestic thunder-cloud 
of the angry Jahveh. Only there could 
the rare and sud@én outburst of a single 
ray of sunshine be held to be a miracle 
of “Love,” as a ray of the most under- 
served mercy. Only there could Christ 
have dreamed of his rainbow and his 
heavenly ladder on which God descend- 
ed to man; everywhere else bright 
weather and sunshine were too much the 
rule, too commonplace. 


16 NIETZSCHE 


MARRIAGE. 


ERE I a god, and a benevolent 

one, the marriages of men would 

annoy me more than anything 
else. Very far, indeed, may a man pro- 
gress in the seventy (nay, thirty) years 
of his life—it is marvelous even ‘to the 
gods! But when we see him hang up 
his inheritance and the fruit of his 
struggles and victory—the laurel- 
wreath of his humanity—upon some pil- 
lar where the first girl that comes along 
may pick it to pieces; when we see how 


much_beiter_he understands acquisition 
than preservation; nay, when we see how 
blind he is to the fact that by procreation 
he may enter into an even more trium- 
phant life—then, indeed, do we grow 
impatient, saying: “In the long run, 
nothing whatever will be made of hu- 
manity; the individual is squandered; 
the fortuitousness of marriage makes all 


rational and ordered progress impos- 
sible!” 


MARRIAGE 17 


Marriage: by this name do I call 


the will of two to create that which 1s. 
greater than either, I call marriage rev- 


erence unto each other as unto those) 
capable of such a will. 

Let this be the significance and the 
truth of thy marriage. But that which 
the many call marriage—alas, what call 
I thate 

Alas! that soul-poverty of two! 
Alas! that soul-filth of two! Alas! that 
miserable dalliance of two! 

And yet they call it marriage, and 
that marriage is made in heaven! 

Well, I like it not—that heaven of 
the useless! Nay, I like them not—those 
beasts caught in heavenly nets!.... 

Laugh not at such marriages! What 
child hath not reason to weep over its 
parents? 

Worthy and ripe for working out 
the destiny of the world appeared this 
man unto me—but when [I saw his wife 
the world seemed to be a madhouse.... 

Here cometh a man who fought for 
truth like a hero—and at last won a little 
dressed-up lie. He calleth it his mar- 
riage! 

Here cometh one who was reserved 
in intercourse and chose his familiars 


18 NIETZSCHE 


fastidiously—and then, suddenly, he 
spoiled his company forever. He calleth 
it his marriage! 

A third looked for a servant with 
the soul of an angel. He became the 


—Also sprach Zarathustra, I 


It is ludicrous when a mob of 
paupers decrees the abolition of hered- 
itary rights, and it is not less ludicrous 
when the childless presume to mold the 
legislation of a country. ‘They have not 
enough cargo in their ships to steer a safe 
course into the ocean of the future. But 
it seems to me just as ludicrous for a man 
who has chosen the acquisition of the 
most knowledge and the solution of the 
largest problems for his lifework, to bur- 
den himself with the care of a family 
....for he thereby stretches a veil before 
his telescope, and through it the rays of 
the distant stars can scarcely pass. ‘Thus 
I arrive at the conclusion that, in matters 
of the highest philosophical consequence, 
the views of all married men are du- 
bious. 

—Menschliches allzu Menschliches, 436 


MARRIAGE 19 


The natural inclination of all wo- 
men to a quiet, uniform, untroubled ex- 
istence....operates inevitably against 
the heroic impulses of the free spirit. | 
Without being aware of it, women act 
like a person who would remove the 
stones from the path of a minerologist, 
lest his feet come in contact with them, 
despite the fact that he has gone forth — 
for the very purpose of coming in con- ; 
tact with them. ss 


—Menschliches allzu Menschliches, 431 


“The Flying Dutchman” preaches 
the sublime doctrine that woman makes 
even the most arrant vagabond settle 
down—or, in Wagnerian jargon, “‘saves”’ 
him. Here I take the liberty to ask a 
question. Granted that all this is true, 
is it also desirable? What becomes of 
the Wandering Jew, once he is adored 
and settled down by a womane He 
ceases to be the eternal seeker! He mar- 
ries—and is of no more interest to us! 
Translated into actuality, what | mean 
is this: that the great danger to artists, to 
geniuses—for they are Wandering Jews 
—lies in women. Adoring women are 


20 NIETZSCHE 


their ruin. Hardly any man has suf-| 
ficient strength of character to resist be-| 
ing corrupted—being ‘‘saved’—when he | 
finds himself treated as a god. 

—Der Fall Wagner, 3! 


PARENTHOOD 21 


PARENTHOOD. 


HOU art young, and thou wishest 

for a wife and achilde I ask thee: 

art thou a man who darest wish 
for a child? 

Art thou a victorious one, a self- 
subduer, a commander of thy senses, a 
master of thy virtues? Thus I inquire 
of thee. 

In thy wish, doth one hear the an- 
imal—or necessity? Or loneliness? Or 
discord with thyself? 

I would that victory and freedom 
were in thy longing for a child! If thou 
hast victory and freedom, it is meet to 
build them monuments..... 

But first thou must build thyself! 

—Also sprach Zarathustra, I 


22 NIETZSCHE 
WOMEN. 


dle, and everything in women hath 
one answer; its name is child-bear- 


[ieee in women is a rid- 


ing. 

Man is for woman a means. The 
end is always the child. But what is 
woman for man? 

Two things are needed by the true 
man: danger and play. Therefore, he 
seeketh woman as the most dangerous of 
toys. 

Man should be educated for war, 
and woman for the recreation of the 
warrior. Everything else is folly..... 

Let woman be a toy, pure and deli- 
cate as a jewel, and illumined by the vir- 
tues of the world that is to come. 

Let a ray of starlight shine in your 
love! Let the hope be in your heart: 
“Would that I might give birth to the 


Let man fear woman when she lov- 
eth, for then she sacrificeth everything 
to that love, and nothing else hath value 
toxsher. a2 


WOMEN 23 


Man’s happiness lieth in “JI will!” 
Woman’s happiness lieth in “He will!” 
Thou goest to women? Forget not 

thy whip! 
—Also sprach Zarathustra, I 


The qualities in woman which in- 
spire respect—or fear—are her greater 
naturalness, her flexibility and craft, her 
tigress-claw, her naivete, her uneduca- 
bility, her instinctive cruelty, her im- 
mense passions and virtues. In spite of 
this fear, she excites pity by appearing 
more afflicted, more fragile, more nec- 
essitous of love, and more liable to disil- 
lusions than any other creature. Man 
has been arrested before woman with 
one foot already in tragedy! Is woman 
about to be disenchanted? 


It is a crime and a mistake to keep 
women ignorant of erotics during the 
years of education previous to their 
marriage. Their frail ideas too often 
break down after so suddenly experienc- 
ing the combination of a god and an an- 
imal in the man they love. 


24 NIETZSCHE 


To be mistaken about the problem 
of woman, to overlook sex-antagonism, to 
dream of equal rights, duties, etc., are 
typical signs of shallow-mindedness. A 
profound man can only, like Orientals, 
consider woman as property, as a being 
whose predestined mission is domesticity. 


LIBERTY 26 


LIBERTY. 


HE worth of a thing often lies, not 

in what one attains with it, but in 

what one pays for it—what it costs. 
Let me give an example. Democracy 
immediately ceases to mean freedom as 
soon as it is attained; afterward, there is 
no more mischievous or more bitter 
enemy of liberty..... It undermines the 
will to power, it gives the levelling ten- 
dency the authority of a moral impulse, 
it makes people small, cowardly and sat- 
isfied.... But democracy produces quite 
different effects so long as it is being 
fought for; it then, in fact, furthers 
freedom in a powerful manner. On 
looking into the matter more accurately, 
we see that it is the warfare itself which 
produces these effects—a warfare for 
liberal institutions which, as warfare, al- 
lows z/liberal instincts to have sway. 
And warfare prepares a man for free- 
dom. For what is freedom? The will 
to be responsible for oneself. The will 
to keep one’s distance. The will to be- 


26 NIETZSCHE 


come indifferent to hardship, severity, 
privation, to life itself. The will to 
sacrifice men to one’s cause—and oneself, 
too. Freedom implies that the manly in- 
stincts, which delight in war and victory, 
have dominion over all other instincts— 
including the instinct to be “happy.” The 
man who is truly free treads under foot 
that contemptible species..of security 
dreamt of by shopkeepers, Christians, 
cows, women, Englishmen and other 
democrats. The free man is a warrior! 
How is freedom to be measured, in in- 
dividuals, as well as in nations? By the 
resistence which has to be overcome, by 
the effort which it costs to preserve 
autonomy. We must seek the highest 
type of freeman where the greatest re- 
sistence is constantly being overcome— 
five paces from tyranny, close to the 
threshold of thraldom....Those peoples 
who were worth something, who became 
worth something, never won their great- 
ness under liberal institutions. Great 
danger made something out of them 
which deserves our reverence—that sort 
of danger which first teaches us to know 
our resources, our virtues, our shield and 
sword, our genitus—which compels us to 
DeweStLOnge.. sone: Those great forcing- 


LIBERTY 27 


houses of the strong—the strongest spe- 
cies of man that has hitherto existed—the 
aristocratic commonwealth of Rome and 
Venice, understood the word freedom as 
I understand it; that is to say, as some- 
thing which one has and has not, as 
something which one eternally desires 
and eternally wins by conquest. 


—Gotzendammerung, IX, 38 


28 NIETZSCHE 


THE LABOR PROBLEM. 


HE fact that there is now a labor 

problem is to be blamed upon stu- 

pidity—or, at the bottom, upon that 
degeneration of the will to power which 
is the cause of all stupidity...... I do 
not at all understand what people want 
to do with the workingman, now that 
they have made a question of him. He 
finds himself situated far too advantage- 
ously to refrain from asking further 
questions himself, and always with de- 
creasing modesty. ‘The majority, at last, 
is now on his side. There is no longer 
any hope that a modest and humble spe- 
cies of human being, after the Chinese 
type, will constitute itself into a work- 
ing class. It would have been the ration- 
al course to build up such a class...... 
but what have people done? Everything 
to annihilate even the germ of the pre- 
requisite for such a course! By the 
most appalling thoughtlessness they have 
destroyed the instincts by virtue of which 
the workingman becomes possible as a 


LABOR 29 


class. He has been made capable of 
military service, he has been given the 
right of combination and the right of 
the franchise. No wonder he already 
feels his class-existence as a state of 
disagreeable necessity (or, in terms of 
morality, as injustice)! But what do 
people want? Let it be asked once more. 
If they want to realize an end, they must 
be willing to use sensible means to that 
end. If they want to have slaves, it is 
foolish to educate them to be masters. 


—Gatzendammerung, IX, 40 


30 NIETZSCHE 


PROGRESS. 


moral? The fact that all the world 

believes we are is in itself a reason 
to doubt it. We modern men—very 
delicate, very easily injured, giving and 
demanding consideration in a hundred 
ways—we flatter ourselves with the no- 
tion that this delicate humanity of ours, 
this realized unanimity in forbearance, 
helplessness and mutual trust, is a sign 
of progress, and that because of it we are 
above the men of the Renaissance. 
Every age, however, thinks of itself in 
this manner; it is ob/iged to think thus. 
But it is certain that we could not live 
under Renaissance conditions. We can- 
not even conceive ourselves living under 
them. Our nerves would not stand it, 
not to speak of our skins. But our in- 
capacity is no proof of progress. It only 
shows that we have reached a different, 
a later condition; that we are weaker, 
tenderer and more easily injured. Out 
of this change humanitarian morality has 


A RE we really becoming more 


PROGRESS 31 


been evolved. If we could think of our- 
selves as lacking our present tenderness, 
(our lateness, our physiological senility) 
our humanitarian morality would forth- 
with lose its value. No morality has any 
value in itself. 

—Gotzendammerung, IX, 37 


Many chains have been put upon 
man in order that he may learn to behave 
less like an animal; and in truth he has 
become more gentle, intellectual, bright 
and cautious than any other animal. Now, 
however, he suffers from the effects of 
these chains and the lack of pure air and 
free movement. These chains are—lI re- 
peat it again and again—the heavy and 
overpowering errors of moral, religious, 
metaphysical concepts. When the chains 
and their effects have been cast off, the 
first great goal is reached; the separation 
of man from beast. We are now just be- 
ginning to cast off the chains, and for this 
we need the greatest caution. 


32 NIETZSCHE 


THE CRIMINAL. 


HE criminal type is the type of the 

strong man under unfavorable con- 

ditions—the strong man who has 
been made sick. He lacks the wildness, 
with its freer and more dangerous en- 
vironment—a state of existence in which 
all that is offensive and defensive in his 
instincts is regarded as right. His vir- 
tues are put under the ban by society, 
and so most powerful impulses in- 
stinctive to him become associated with 
depressing concepts—with fear, susp1- 
cion and disgrace. ‘This, unluckily, is 
almost the recipe for producing physio- 
logical degeneration. ‘The man who 
must do secretly and by stealth, and in 
the face of constant danger, the thing 
that he can best do, and that he most 
desires to do—this man inevitably be- 
comes anaemic. And because his yield- 
ing to his instincts is followed inevitably 
by danger, persecution and calamity, his 
sentiment toward those instincts changes. 
He begins to regard them, in a word, 


THE CRIMINAL 33 


as harmful. In our domesticated, me- 
diocre, emasculated society, a man com- 
ing from the mountains or from seafar- 
ing adventures, with his natural instincts 
unimpaired, necessarily degenerates into 
a criminal,—or almost necessarily, for 
there are, of course, cases in which such 
a man proves himself stronger than soci- 
ety. The Corsican Napoleon offers the 
Sigsumecienrated example. ix.” Let us 
generalize the criminal. Let us look 
into the character of those persons who, 
for any reason whatever, lack the good 
opinion of the public—who know that 
they are not regarded as useful members 
of society—who have the Chandala’s 
feeling that they are counted inferior, 
outcast, unworthy and defiling. All such 
men take on a subterranean color in their 
thoughts and actions; everything in them 
becomes paler than in those whose lives 
are lived in daylight...... But almost 
all classes of men whom we now honor 
once lived in this semi-sepulchural at- 
mosphere—the scientific man, artist, the 
genius, the free spirit, the actor, the mer- 
chant, the great discoverer. As long, in- 
deed, as the priest passed for the highest 
type of man, every truly valuable class 
was depreciated..... But the time. comes 


34 NIETZSCHE 


—I promise it!—when the priest will be 
regarded as the /owest type—as the most 
mendacious, the most disreputable vari- 
ety of human being. 


—Gotzendammerung, IX, 45 


FAITH 36 


FAITH. 


A LL great intellects are skeptical 


.strength and masterful intel- 
ligence reveal themselves by skep- 
ticism. Men of fixed conviction are not 
worth consulting when an effort is being 
made to determine the fundamental val- 
uations. Convictions are prisons. Men 
who hold to them do not see far enough 
—they do not see be/ow themselves. But 
to be entitled to a voice in the determina- 
tion of values one must be able to see five 
hundred convictions be/ow oneself—be- 
hind oneself. An intellect which reaches 
out for the great truths, and for the 
means to their attainment, is necessarily 
Berit 3) VLA. On the other hand, the 
need of a belief, of something that 1s 
unconditioned by Ved Or Navan (hs is a 
need of weakness. ‘The man of faith, the 
true believer of any kind, is necessarily 
a dependent man...... Every variety of 
belief is, in itself, an exaggeration of self- 
abegnation,..... 


—Der Antichrist, 54 


36 NIETZSCHE 


It is so little true that a martyr 
proves the truth of his cause that I am 
constrained to deny that a martyr ever 
has anything to do with the truth...... 
Martyrdoms have been a great misfor- 
tune in history, for they have seduced. 
The inference of all idiots (women and 
the mob included) that a doctrine for 
which a man lays down his life (or 
which, like primitive Christianity, en- 
genders an epidemic of the desire to die 
for it) is necessarily an important one— 
this inference has always been an un- 
speakable drag upon the search for the 
eu G ATL The martyrs, in a word, have 
injured the truth...... Even at the pres- 
ent time some sort of persecution is all 
that is needed to give an honorable name 
to the most indifferent doctrine. But is 
it true that the credibility of a doctrine 
is altered in the slightest degree by the 
fact that someone is willing to die for 
it? No; an error which thus becomes 
honorable is merely an error which takes 
on an additional capacity for seduction. 
Do you fancy, Messrs. the theologians, 
that we will give you a chance to suffer 
martyrdom for your lies? The right way 
to refute an error is to lay it respectfully 
on ice; it is just so that one refutes 


FAITH 37 


theologians. It showed the grand his- 
torical stupidity of all persecutors that 
they gave an honorable aspect to the 
cause of their opponents—that they 
added to it, as a free gift, the additional 
fascination of martyrdom. Woman is 
still prostrate on her knees before one 
error because she has been told that 
someone died for it on the cross. But 1s 
the cross an argument? 


Der Antichrist, 53 


28 NIETZSCHE 


FREE WILL. 


E have no longer any sympathy 

with the notion of free will; we 

know only too well what it is— 
the most disreputable of all theological 
devices for making men “responsible” 
(that is, in thezr sense of the word) so that 
they become dependent upon theologians. 
... Whenever you encounter an attempt 
to establish responsibility, you will al- 
ways find a yearning to punish and con- 
demn at the bottom of it... The dogma of 
free will was devised principally for the 
purpose of punishing, 7. e. with the in- 
tention of finding guilty. ‘The old psy- 
chology—will-psychology—would have 
been impossible but for the fact that 
its originators (the priests at the head of 
the old commonwealths) wanted to 
create for themselves a right to impose 
punishment—or a right for God to do so. 
Men were imagined to be free in order 
that they might be condemned and 
punished—in order that they might be 
found guilty. Consequently, every act 


FREE WILL 39 


had to be thought of as voluntary, and 
the origin of every act had to be thought 
of as residing in consciousness. We who 
have entered upon a movement in the op- 
posite direction—we immoralists who 
endeavor, with our will to power, to rid 
the world of its notions of guilt and pun- 
ishment, and to cleanse psychology, his- 
tory, nature and society from these 
notions—we face, in these days, no more 
fundamental antagonism than that of the 
theologians, who, with their notion of a 
“moral order of the world,” go on taint- 
ing the innocence of life with punish- 
ment and guilt. Christianity is the hang- 
man’s. metaphysic! 
—Gotzendammerung, VI, 7 


40 NIETZSCHE 


| PATRIOTISM. 


N TE good Europeans are not 
French enough to “love man- 
kind.” A man must be afflicted 
by an excess of Gallic eroticism to ap- 
proach mankind with ardor. Mankind! 
Was there ever a more hideous old wom- 
an among all the old women?....No, 
we do not love mankind!....On the other 
hand, we are not German enough to ad- 
vocate nationalism and race hatred, or to 
take delight in that national blood- 
poisoning which sets up quarantines be- 
tween the nations of Europe. We are too 
unprejudiced for that—too perverse, too 
fastidious, too well-informed, too much 
traveled. We prefer to live on mountains 
—apart, unseasonable..... We srarcetoo 
diverse and mixed in race to be patriots. 
We are, in a word, good Europeans—the 
rich heirs of milleniums of European 
thoueht seca. 
We rejoice in everything which, 
like ourselves, loves danger, war, adven- 
ture—which does not make compromises, 


PATRIOTISM 41 


nor let itself be captured, conciliated or 
Racer LS; k 0: We ponder over the need of 
a new order of things—even of a new 
slavery, for the strengthening and eleva- 
tion of the human race always involves 
the existence of slaves. 


—Die frohliche Wissenschaft, 377 


42 NIETZSCHE 


THE SUPERMAN. 


somthing that shall be surpassed. 
What have ye done to surpass hime 
All beings that have come into the 
world heretofore have created something 
beyond themselves. Are ye going to be — 
the ebb of the tide? Are ye going back 
to the animal or ahead to the superman? 
What to man is the ape?e A joke or 
a sore shame. Man shall be the same to 
the superman—a joke or a sore shame. 
Ye have made your way from worm 
to man, but much within you is still 
worm. Once ye were apes, but even now 
man is but an ape greater than any ape... 
Behold, I teach you the superman! 


—Also sprach Zarathustra, I 


a teach you the superman! Man is 


Man is a rope connecting animal 
and superman—a rope over a preci- 


THE SUPERMAN 43 


The greatness of man lies in this: 

~ that he is a bridge and not a goal. The 

thing that can be loved in man is this: 

matene is a transition. and an exit... 

I love those who do not seek beyond 

the stars for reasons to perish and be 

sacrificed, but who sacrifice themselves 

to earth that earth may one day bring 
forth the superman. 

—Also sprach Zarathustra, I 


44 NIETZSCHE 


BEAUTY. 


OTHING is more conditioned, or 
N rate: restricted, than our notion 

of the beautiful. A person who 
tried to think of it as detached from de- 
light of man in himself would immedi- 
ately lose his way. ‘The “beautiful-in- 
itself” is an expression only and not even 
a concept. In considering beauty, man 
always posits himself as the standard of 
perfection; in some cases he even wor- 
ships himself as that standard. A species 
cannot possibly do otherwise than thus 
say yea to itself. Its lowest instinct, 
that of simple self-preservation and self- 
expression, casts its shadow upon even 
such sublimities. Man affects to believe 
that the world itself is overcharged with 
beauty: he forgets that he himself is the 
cause of it. He alone has endowed it 
with beauty—and only, alas! with very 
human, all-too-human beauty!....Man 
mirrors himself in things. He counts 
everything beautiful which reflects his 
likeness. When he calls a thing beauti- 


BEAUTY 46 


ful he merely displays his conceit in his 
species. 
—Gotzendammerung, IX, 19 


Nothing is beautiful, except man; 
all aesthetics are founded upon this 
naivete, it is their first truth. Let us 
straightway add their second ; ‘nothing is 
ugly, except the degenerating man)... 
Whatever is ugly weakens and troubles 
man. It reminds him of deterioration, 
danger, impotence; he actually suffers 
loss of power in contemplating it. When- 
ever man is depressed he has a sense of 
the proximity of something “ugly.” His 
sense of power, his will to power, his 
courage, his pride—all sink with the 
ugly and rise with the beautiful. ‘The 
ugly is instinctively recognized as a sign 
and symptom of degeneration; that 
which reminds us in the remotest manner 
of degeneracy prompts us to pronounce 
the verdict of “ugly.” Every indication 
of exhaustion, heaviness, age or lassi- 
tude; every variety of constraint, such 
as a cramp or paralysis; and above all, 
the odour,color and likeness of decom- 
position or putrefaction, be it attenuated 
even to a mere symbol—all these things 


46 NIETZSCHE 


call for the same reaction, the evaluation 
“ugly.” A hatred is thereby excited— 
and what is it that man hates? ‘There 
can be no doubt; it is the decline of his 
type. That hatred is inspired by the most 
profound instinct of the species; there is 
horror, foresight, profundity and _ far- 
reaching vision in it—it is the profoundest 
of all hatreds. On account of it, art is 
profound. 

—Gotzendammerung, IX, 20 


ART 47 


ART. 


HE fight against a purpose in art is 
always a fight against the moraliz- 
ing tendency in art—against its sub- 
ordination to morality. ‘Art for art’s 
sake” means “The devil take morality!” 
But....when the purpose of the ethical 
preacher and the improver of mankind 
has been excluded from art, it does not 
at all follow that art itself is without a 
purpose, without a goal, without mean- 
ing....‘‘No purpose at all, rather than 
a moral purpose!”—this is mere passion 
speaking. A psychologist, on the con- 
trary, asks the question: What does all 
art do? Does it not praise? Does it not 
glorify? Does it not select? Does it 
not bring into prominence? In all these 
cases it strengthens or weakens certain 
valuations...... isithisconlys:2 ers an ac- 
cident? 
—Gaotzendammerung, IX, 24 


48 NIETZSCHE 


DEATH. 


ATURAL death is death under the 
N tvs contemptible conditions. It 
is involuntary death, death at the 
wrong time, a coward’s death...... We 
should desire a different kind of death— 
voluntary, conscious, not accidental or 
bysurprise:, va) When a man does away 
with himself he does the noblest thing in 
the world. By doing it, he almost proves 
his right to live. 
—Gotzendammerung, IX, 36 


Under certain conditions it is im- 
proper to live any longer. Continued 
vegetation in cowardly dependence upon 
physicians and prescriptions, after the © 
meaning of life, the right to life, has 
been lost, should entail the profound con- 
tempt of humanity. 

—Gotzendammerung, IX, 36 


DEATH AQ 


Natural death is destitute of ration- 
ality. It is really irrational death, for 
the pitiable substance of the shell deter- 
mines how long the kernel shall endure. 
The pining, sottish prison-warder de- 
cides the hour at which his noble prisoner 
Tet IGS The enlightened regula- 
tion and control of death belongs to the 
morality of the future. 

Pernice allzu Menschliches, III 
105 


I sing unto you my death, my free 
death, which cometh because I will it! 

And when shall I will it? He who 
hath a goal and an heir wishest death to 
come at the right time for goal and heir. 

And out of reverence for goal and 
heir he will hang up no more withered 
wreaths in the sanctuary of life...... 

And whosoever wisheth fame, must 
in due season say farewell to honor, and 
achieve the difficult task of departing at 
the right time. 

One must cease to be eaten at the 
time one tasteth best. He who would be 
loved for long must know that. 

—Also sprach Zarathustra, I. 


50 NIETZSCHE 


MINOR SAYINGS. 


HAT does not kill me, strength- 
ens me. ; 


Help thyself; then everyone else 
helps thee. 


How is it? Is man only a mistake 
of God?e Or God only a mistake of 
mane 


Contentment is a prophylactic. Has 
any woman who knew she was well 
dressed ever caught cold? 


There is a hatred of lying due to a 
sensitive notion of honor; there is also 
a hatred of lying due to the fact that it 
is forbidden by a divine command. 
Thus, a man may be too cowardly to tell 
lies. 


How little is required for happiness! 
The sound of a bagpipe! 


The most important fruit of human 
effort in the past is that we need no 


MINOR SAYINGS 51 


longer live in dread of wild beasts, 
barbarians, gods and our own dreams. 


Civilization aims at making all good 
things—honors, treasure, fair women— 
accessible even to cowards. 


Dante—the hyena poetizing in 
tombs! 


Zola—the delight to stink! 


George Sand—a milch-cow with a 
grand manner! 


Sainte-Beuve—a female, after all, 
with a woman’s revengefulness and a wo- 
an’s sensousness! 


The Brothers Goncourt — the two 
Ajaxes struggling with Homer; music 
by Offenbach! 


The greatest modern event—that 
God is dead—that the Christian God 
has become unworthy of belief—has now 
begun to cast its shadows over Europe. 


The philosopher has to be the bad 
conscience of his age. 


Nothing is rarer among moralists 
and saints than rectitude. 


52 NIETZSCHE 


At the bottom of all distinguished 
races the beast of prey is not to be mis- 
taken—the magnificent blood beast roam- 
ing wantonly in search of prey and vic- 


tory. 
You say that a good cause will sanc- 


« tify even war! I tell you that a good 
_war will sanctify any cause! 


You should love peace as a means to 
new war, and the short peace more than 
the long. 


This new table, brethren, I put up 
for you: “Be hard!” 


He who cannot lie doesn’t know 
what truth is. 


The idealist is incorrigible; if one 
casts him out of his heaven, he makes an 
ideal of his hell. 


There is a superfluity of goodness 
which is like wickedness. 


FRANCE 53 


FRANCE. 


bility, of taste, and nobleness has 

been the work and creation of 
France. Even today France is the refuge 
of the most intellectual and refined cult- 
ure, and is still the great school of taste. 
Schopenhauer is more to this France of 
taste than he ever was to the Germans. 
Heine has long since passed into the flesh 
and blood of the best Parisian lyrics; and 
Hegel, in the person of Taine, exercises 
an almost tyrannical sway. As to Wag- 
ner, the more French music adapts itself 
to the exigencies of the modern soul, 
the more will it become Wagnerized. 


\ LL that Europe has known of sensi- 


54 NIETZSCHE 


WEAKNESS 


ELIEF of some kind is always 
B most urgently needed when Will 

is lacking. For Will, as the love 
of command, is the distinguishing char- 
acteristic of strength and independence. 
The less a man understands the art of 
commanding, the more he longs for a 
commander, be it a person, a belief, or 
a conviction. We are therefore perhaps 
not far wrong if we consider the two 
world-religions, Buddhism and Christ- 
lanity, as having their origin, and es- 
pecially their sudden expansion, in an im- 
mense weakness and decrease of volition. 
Both religions found a desire existing 
for a “Thou shalt,” a desire caused by 
a disease of Will-power. They offered 
happiness to numberless weak souls, for 
they taught them fanaticism; and fan- 
aticism is the only exercise of the Will 
to which the feeble and the uncertain can 
attain, through a kind of hypnotising of 
their whole sensual and intellectual sys- 
tem, which results in the over-nourish- 


WEAKNESS 55 


ment and over-development of one single 
point of view. ‘This one point of view 
dominates them—and this the Christian 
calls his Faith. 


56 NIETZSCHE 


INTELLECTUAL JEALOUSY. 


HERE is this difference between 

sociable and solitary intellectual na- 

tures; the former are contented with 
anything, as soon as their intellects have a 
communicable, favorable version of it; 
but the lonely souls have their silent rapt- 
ure, their speechless agony. They loath 
the ingenious, brilliant display of their in- 
nermost problems as sincerely as seeing 
their beloved too gaudily dressed; they 
watch her with mournful eyes, as though 
with a dawning suspicion that she is de- 
sirous of pleasing others. Such is the 
jealousy which all lonely thinkers and 
passionate dreamers display with regard 
to “esprit.” 


THE GENTLEMAN 57 


THE GENTLEMAN. 


HE demeanor of high-born persons 
shows plainly that in their minds 
the consciousness of power is ever- 
present. Above all things, they strive to 
avoid a show of weakness, whether it 
takes the form of inefficiency or of a too- 
easy yielding to passion or emotion. ‘They 
never sink exhausted into a chair. On the 
train, when the vulgar try to make them- 
selves comfortable, these higher folk 
avoid reclining. They do not seem to 
get tired after hours of standing at court. 
They do not furnish their houses in a com- 
fortable, but in a spacious and dignified 
manner, as if they were the abodes of a 
taller race of beings. 

To a provoking speech, they reply, 
with politeness and self-possession—and 
not as if horrified, crushed, abashed, en- 
raged or out of breath, after the manner 
of plebeians. The aristocrat knows how 
to preserve the appearance of ever-pres- 
ent physical strength, and he knows, too, 
how to convey the impression that his soul 


58 NIETZSCHE 


and intellect are a match to all dangers 
and surprises, by keeping up an unchang- 
ing serenity and civility, even under the 
most trying circumstances. 


Morgenraote, § 201. 


THE JEWS 59 


THE JEWS. 


HE Jews will either become the 

masters of Europe or lose Europe, 

as they once lost Egypt. And it 
seems to be improbable that they will lose 
again. In Europe, for eighteen centur- 
ies, they have passed through a school 
more terrible than that known to any 
other nation, and the experiences of this 
time of stress and storm have benefitted 
the individual more than the community. 
In consequence, the resourcefulness and 
alertness of the modern Jew are extraor- 
Selah Vey: In times of extremity, the 
people of Israel less often sought refuge 
in drink and suicide than any other race 
of Europe. ‘Today, every Jew finds in 
the history of his forebears a voluminous 
record of coolness and perseverance in 
terrible predicaments—of artful cunning 
and clever fencing with chance and mis- 
fortune. The Jews have hid their brave- 
ry under the cloak of submissiveness; 
their heroism in facing contempt surpas- 
ses that of the saints. People tried to 


60 NIETZSCHE 


make them contemptible for twenty cen- 
turies by refusing them all honors and 
dignities and by pushing them down into 
the mean trades. The process did not 
make them cleaner, alas! but neither did 
it make them contemptible. 

Morgenrote § 205. 


PRESS COMMENT 
on 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF 
NIETZSCHE. 


“He (Mr. Mencken) has writ- 
ten one of the most interesting 
and instructive books that has 
come from the American press in 
many a long day” 

—The Educational Review. (Edited 
by Nicholas Murray Butler.) 


“As time goes on Nietzsche, 
Wagner and Ibsen bid fair to be- 
come, if they have not already 
reached that eminence, the most 
widely discussed Europeans of the 
latter nineteenth century...It does 
not flaunt obscurities in the face 
of the unenlightened reader nor 
does it offend the knowledge of 
the Nietzschean expert. After read. 
ing Mr. Mencken, we need no 
longer look at Nietzsche askance.” 
—Boston Evening Transcript 


“Tt is an illuminating and 
eventful work. His clear and con- 
cise exposition of the ‘overlord 
and underman’ system of social 
regulation, elaborated in Nietz- 
sche’s works, should command a 
large measure of popular interest 
and attention.” 

—Philadelphia North American. 


“Though we dissent profound- 
ly from the appreciation of Nietz- 
sche expressed in this volume, 
(The Philosophy of Freidrich 
Nietzsche), we have to thank the 
author for his keen analysis and 
clear statement of the ideas and 
principals that characterize the 
philosophy of the Superman.” 
—The Catholic World. 


FREIDRICH NIETZSCHE 


The standard work in English 
on the subject of Nietzsche’s phil- 


Mr. Mencken, after presenting 
a careful biography to the reader, 
proceeds to analyze and arrange 
logical sequence Nietzsche’s 
philosophic system, The result is 
‘a full, clear and impartial presen- 
tation of the teachings of this 
most radical thinker whose influence 
is sO apparent in all progressive 
thought of the present time. 

The subject is presented not 
only in a thoughtful but entertain- 
ing style while the keen insight 
which the author has into the in- 
fluences which this philosophy is 
exercising in all fields of activity 
today adds greatly to its value. 

Crown octavo. Cloth, with 
etched portrait. 325 pages. 


Price $2. net. Postage 15 cents. 
John W. Luce and Company 


THE PHILOSOPHY 


of 


by 
Henry L. Mencken 


Boston 


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A Teta 
a PRUARY 


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